


Dapò

by Brynn_Jones



Series: Badass Melinda May [5]
Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, BAMF Melinda May, F/M, Jealousy, Pre-Relationship, Season/Series 01, The Cavalry Melinda May
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-25
Updated: 2018-01-25
Packaged: 2019-03-09 11:01:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,150
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13480116
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Brynn_Jones/pseuds/Brynn_Jones
Summary: When the team gets a new case, May has to swallow her pride and go undercover as a North Korean refugee. Dealing with a heartbroken Skye at the same time, she can’t wait for the mission to be over.





	Dapò

**Author's Note:**

> 打破 (dǎpò) = break  
> 去你的 (qù nǐde) = fuck off/screw you  
> 白痴 (báichī) = idiots  
> 뭐 (mwo?) = what? (in Korean)
> 
> Thank you to my wonderful beta eureka1 :)

“Skye’s not speaking to me,” Melinda exclaimed as soon as she entered his office without bothering to knock, startling him from filling out the paperwork for their last mission. It had been a bit of a mess, with May getting shot several times while protecting him, so the forms he had to fill out were copious.

“Huh?” He looked up at her in confusion.

“Skye,” May repeated, voice steady, “is not speaking to me.”

Phil put down his pen, leaning back in his chair. This was such a bizarre conversation that he had to pay attention - Melinda was complaining about someone not talking. “I didn’t know the two of you talked,” he remarked carefully, eyebrows raised teasingly.

The Chinese woman gave him a barely-there shrug. “We don’t. Usually it’s just her talking and me staring at her,” she admitted. “But now, whenever I walk into a room, she leaves as quickly as possible.”

“And you mind that,” he concluded, speaking slowly as he chose his words carefully.

The specialist scoffed. “No,” she denied immediately, “god knows that girl never stops talking.”

“So what’s the problem?” Phil questioned, just about managing to suppress a smile.

May narrowed her eyes at him, the black pools boring into him. “Are you doing this on purpose?”

He finally chuckled. “Sorry,” he apologised. “I get it. Skye’s avoiding you more than usual, so you think something’s wrong, right?”

Melinda nodded.

Coulson sighed. “Might have something to do with her finding out about you and Ward,” he disclosed. “She overheard us talking in the hospital.”

May pressed her lips tightly together in a show of annoyance. “Great,” she muttered sarcastically.

Phil rose from behind his desk. “In my defence, Ward was making it really hard to miss that the two of you have a thing.”

“We don’t have a thing,” the small woman denied, and Phil had a feeling she wanted to roll her eyes. “We’re having sex.”

“Some people would call that a-”

“Some people,” she interrupted, “should mind their own business. This has nothing to do with Skye.”

Before Coulson could come up with a response to that, his cell rang. He picked it up with a sigh. “Ten bucks say the case is back the way we came from, and you’ll have to do an one-eighty.”

Melinda did roll her eyes that time. “I don’t bet against certainty,” she commented, turning on her heel and heading back downstairs, presumably on her way to the cockpit. “Just give me the coordinates.”

He had been almost right; they didn’t have to turn the plane all the way around, but they did have to change their course by more than ninety degrees. The new case brought them to a small town in Texas, where a group of local fanatics were allegedly holding hostage a pair of North Korean defectors.

 

“Well, that’s random,” Fitz commented after Phil had briefed the team.

Coulson shrugged. “Yeah, I know, we don’t even have an idea how the Koreans managed to get to Texas.”

“But why are they keeping them hostage?” questioned Skye, who was standing as far away from May and Ward as the Bus’ command centre allowed. “They flee one prison and end up in another.”

Ward nodded in agreement. “Do we think it has something to do with Centipede?”

Phil shook his head. “Negative. This is more of a diplomatic incident kind of thing that the government wants to get sorted quietly. We’re all under specific orders not to share information about the case with anyone.”

The young hacker sniffed disdainfully. “Isn’t that like a standing order with SHIELD? You never let me publish anything, AC.”

“This time, the embargo applies to other SHIELD agents as well - we’re not to talk about it with anyone else other than each other, Commander Hill, and Director Fury.”

Simmons bounced excitedly. “You hear that, Fitz? A proper secret mission!”

Skye rolled her eyes fondly at the other woman’s behaviour. “Yeah, because the other missions weren’t secret at all.”

“Anyway,” Phil interrupted the chatter, wanting to bring his people back on track. “We can’t just storm the place and hope nothing goes wrong; we’re not even sure where exactly they’re holding the Koreans.”

“So we do surveillance,” Ward suggested.

“Yes,” Coulson agreed. “Also, I want Skye to see if she can hack into any security cameras in town to find out how the Koreans got in and how they got captured. We’ll need it.”

May narrowed her eyes at him, suspicious. “Why?”

He shoved his hands in his trouser pockets. “Uh, you’re not going to like it,” he told her with a sympathetic wince.

She stared at him for a moment and then, “No.”

“May.”

“No.”

He sighed, running his hand through the hair at the back of his head. “Listen, I don’t like sending you in there any more than you want to go,” he assured his friend. “I think Simmons is still suffering from the whiplash you gave her with how fast you recovered after our last mission.”

“I’m fine,” the Asian woman said automatically, for what felt like the thousandth time that week.

Phil smiled. “I know.” Then he continued, “And trust me, if there was anyone else I could send, I would.”

“I’m not Korean,” May complained, voice mostly deadpan, but Phil could detect a hint of a whine in it.

Phil gave her his best innocent smile. “Well,  _ I _ know that, but do you really think a couple of idiots from a small town that has probably never seen an Asian person before are going to tell a difference?”

Melinda still looked annoyed but seemed to resign herself to her fate of going undercover. “Fine,” she muttered darkly, finally nodding in agreement.

“Great. Besides,” Coulson continued with a cheeky grin, “there was that guy in Topeka who thought you were Indian.”

“Native American,” May corrected, while the rest of the team gave them amused looks.

“Right, that’s what I meant.”

Melinda shrugged. “And the guy was a paranoid schizophrenic that thought Vinnetou was out to get him,” she reminded him.

Phil just smiled at her.

May took a deep breath, calming herself. “You owe me a drink when we’re done,” she demanded before leaving the room and heading to lock herself into the cockpit.

Simmons barely restrained herself from rushing after her patient. “She can’t drink,” she informed Coulson. “Agent May is still on some strong painkillers.”

Phil gave the scientist a patronising pat on the shoulder. “She’s not taking them,” he revealed. “I don’t think she ever was.”

“But, but…” Jemma trailed off, confused and maybe a little annoyed.

Melinda May never took any medications unless it was completely necessary because she claimed they impeded her senses. And as a specialist, her senses were among her most important assets - the constant awareness of what was going around her had saved their lives on more than one occasion.

“Come on, people, enough chatter,” he commanded. “Let’s hash out the details.”

Two hours later, mission ready, they touched down on a small piece of tarmac a couple of miles away from their target town. Skye had figured out that the refugees had arrived in Texas as a part of a secret CIA transport for political prisoners, but that they were then attacked by an armed group of seven who appropriately called themselves ‘The Texas Seven’.

“I mean, could you get any more cliché?” Skye had asked incredulously during their debrief, completely ignoring whatever comment Ward pitched in with.

The group of refugees, frightened and confused, had then dispersed in an effort to escape the armed men. Most of them seemed to have been successful, as the self-proclaimed Texas Seven only managed to apprehend two. May, their undercover Korean, was going to stumble into town, scared and not knowing a word of English, as a bait which would hopefully lead the team straight to the hostages.

Speaking of May, Coulson watched as the female specialist exited her bunk in an off-white loose shirt and an ankle-length black skirt. Her hair was loose and mussed as if she had just gone a few rounds with Ward. A few rounds on the mats, Phil specified in his head, not wanting to think about any other rounds the two might be sharing.

Raising an eyebrow at her appearance, he asked her, “You gonna be able to move in that?”

She shrugged. “Better than that stupid dress our handler forced me to wear in Prague,” she told him. Phil thought back to that mission and had to force himself to look sympathetic to his friend’s plight. He felt a little bad about it, but he had definitely enjoyed that dress - it had been a long, sleek gown in deep red with strategically placed cutouts at the sides. It had been pretty tight on her, admittedly, but she had been a vision that night.

“Wasn’t that bad,” he just mumbled, sizing up her outfit again. “Got anywhere we can put a tracker?”

She shot him a murderous look. “I would, if Korean refugees wore bras,” she deadpanned.

Phil’s gaze involuntarily slid to May’s chest, as he tried to notice a difference. Her breasts might have been a little more noticeable, he decided, but the difference wasn’t remarkable. Returning his eyes to his friend’s face, he encountered an amused expression.

“You done?” she asked in a teasing tone.

“Uh, yeah,” he stumbled over his words. “Sorry.”

She shrugged. “It’s not like there’s a lot to look at,” she responded unselfconsciously.

Coulson, feeling a ridiculous need to defend her even from her own words, scowled at her. “You’re just about enough to look at, Melinda,” he assured her. “You always were.”

Their flirting - if that was what it had been - was cut short by Ward appearing from below. “We’re ready, sir,” he informed him.

Phil nodded. “Good. Now we just need to have May put a tracker somewhere and we’re set on our end too.”

The trio made their way downstairs to the lab, where the rest of the team was already waiting. Fitz outstretched a hand with what looked like a small pharmaceutical capsule. “I have the tracker ready, sir. Agent May just needs to, uh, put it somewhere it doesn’t fall out.”

May grabbed the little thing, looking at it skeptically. “I don’t have to swallow it, do I?” she questioned.

Fitz swallowed nervously. “No, of course not, a pocket would do.”

She eyes her own clothes before giving the engineer an inquiring look. “You see any pockets, Agent Fitz?”

“Um, no,” he answered, throwing an unsure look at Coulson as if to ask if he was at fault somehow. Phil gave him a reassuring shake of the head.

May sighed. “Fine, I’ll go and put it somewhere,” she agreed, turning to leave the lab.

Ward stepped forward. “I can help you,” he offered, causing Skye to snort.

“You’d like that, wouldn’t you?” the hacker muttered under her breath.

The Chinese woman shot them both an unimpressed look. “I’ll manage,” she assured them tightly, leaving through the glass door and stomping upstairs in search of some privacy. Coulson figured - along with the rest of the team probably - that she’d have no choice but to stick the thing down her pants. He tried not to think about it too much.

 

Once everything - including the tracker - was in place, they made their move. They dropped Melinda off about a mile away from the town, with Ward and Coulson following her at a comfortable distance. FitzSimmons and Skye stayed at the Bus, keeping an eye on things from safety.

It didn’t take them long to reach the first buildings, May’s pace brisk even with the hot Texan sun beating down on them. Phil watched as the female specialist’s shoulders suddenly slumped as if the weight of the world pressed down on her, a haunted look entering her eyes as she got into character. It was only afterwards that Phil noticed a woman leaving one of the houses on their left - the first person they had encountered since arriving in Texas.

“She’s good,” Ward breathed next to him, eyes intent on the Chinese woman.

“Yeah,” Coulson agreed, watching Melinda gesture something to the woman, muttering a couple of Korean phrases she had hurriedly crammed into her head before they’d headed out.

The woman shook her head cluelessly, giving May a look filled with pity before pointing somewhere towards the town centre. “You have to ask someone else,” the woman was saying. “I have no clue what you’re saying.”

Melinda gave up with a tired shrug of her shoulders, shuffling in the direction the woman had indicated. When she was out of hearing distance, she muttered, “Neither do I.”

Phil snorted. “Stay in character, May,” he chided.

“Qù nǐde,” was the woman’s swift answer as she trudged on, and Phil had the niggling suspicion she had just insulted his mother. May had once told him that many Chinese expletives somehow involved insulting one’s mother, so he felt justified in his assumption.

It was a testament to their plan that it didn’t take May even half an hour to attract the right kind of attention - Ward being the first to notice the two men who began following her.

“You have two on your four o’clock,” the male specialist informed her through the commlink.

“I see them,” she whispered, stumbling over her feet a little for show.

“They’re approaching,” Phil noted as he watched the suspicious duo make its way closer to the fake Korean.

“Hey, lass, you hurt?” one of them asked, causing May to turn around.

“Mwo?” she asked, a very convincing look of utter confusion on her face.

“I asked if you were hurt,” the man repeated, stepping closer.

The Chinese woman let out a desperate string of gibberish that sounded like it could’ve been Korean, but Phil was reasonably sure was not. The two guys didn’t seem to notice, though, as one of them grabbed hold of May’s arm.

“Come on, you little bitch,” the bigger guy said in a calming voice that didn’t fit the words he was speaking. “We’ll lock you up with the other freeloaders.”

May, acting the part of a confused refugee, seemed grateful as she let herself get tugged along.

Phil and Ward didn’t dare to follow them in fear of endangering their plan, so they stopped behind a nearby shop, calling the plane. “You have eyes on them, Skye?” Coulson asked, watching May disappear around a corner with her two captors.

“Negative,” came the hacker’s voice over the comm.

“Damn,” he swore. “What about the tracker signal, Fitz?”

The engineer was quiet for a second before reporting, “I got it; they’re moving southwest.”

“Good, tell me when they stop,” Phil ordered, clicking off his earpiece.

He and Ward waited in silence for a couple of minutes before Phil felt the need to speak. Grasping for something that wasn’t about Melinda - because any conversation about her with Ward was going to be awkward - he finally settled on, “Are you and Skye all right?”

Ward raised a surprised eyebrow. “Sir?”

“You and Skye,” Coulson repeated. “You seem a little awkward?”

The handsome specialist looked embarrassed for a moment before he managed to straighten his face. “She, um, has a crush on me, I think,” he finally disclosed after a long minute of consideration.

“Oh.” Coulson should’ve seen that coming. “So she’s hurt you’re having sex with May,” he concluded.

Ward shrugged. “Honestly, sir, I’m not sure who she’s pissed with more - me or May.”

That made sense, May had said the girl was ignoring her. Irritated, he grunted, “This is what happens when agents sleep together. You better fix this.”

“Me?” Grant queried incredulously. “It’s not my fault Skye caught feelings.”

“No,” Phil agreed. “But it is your fault that  _ you  _ did.”

Feigning confusion, Ward intoned, “Excuse me?”

Coulson opened his mouth to explain, when the comm in his ear came to life with Fitz’s voice, “They’ve stopped, sir. They’re about six hundred yards southwest of you.”

“We’re on the move,” he assured the engineer, motioning for Ward to follow him.

“The signal is a little weaker than before,” Fitz went on, “She’s probably underground.”

“Roger that,” he acknowledged, picking up his pace. “You got that?” he asked Ward, glancing at the other man briefly.

The specialist nodded, his gun clutched in his hand tightly.

“You don’t have a permission to kill unless absolutely necessary,” Coulson reminded him.

“I know,” Ward affirmed, an intent look in his eyes. “Shooting out their kneecaps won’t kill them.”

They reached their position soon after, Fitz pointing them to a small brickwall house at the end of the street. “It has to have a basement or something, sir,” Fitz conveyed.

“Right. Ward, you go round back. I’ll knock on the front door,” he instructed, readying himself on the front porch.

“I’m in position,” the specialist reported.

Phil tightened his hands around his own gun. “Okay, on three?”

His commlink suddenly crackled. “Just get down here,” came May’s voice, strained and panting. “We’re in the,” a pause, a loud thump, and a man’s painful gasp, “basement.”

Phil didn’t dilly-dally any longer, telling Ward to move in and doing the same. It became immediately clear that there was no one on the first floor, and Coulson would have considered the house empty if he couldn’t hear the sounds of struggle from somewhere beneath them.

Opening and closing one door after another, the two male agents searched for the entrance to the basement. They found it not on their own accord but because a door at the end of the hall suddenly opened, a very injured man in a checked shirt stumbling out.

Ward had the perp unconscious on the floor before Coulson could even blink. A loud crack and the sound of a breaking glass filtered up the stairs, causing the two agents to move into action. They quickly descended the rickety steps, before stopping at the bottom, assessing the scene that welcomed them. Two terrified looking Korean refugees were pressed together in a corner, handcuffed but otherwise unharmed, mumbling what sounded like some kind of prayer in their native language. Four men, all in a very stereotypical Texan get-up, lay unconscious on the floor - Phil noticing one of them had his arm bent in a very unnatural position. Last, but certainly not least, there was May in the middle of the room. She was battling it out with the remaining two criminals, hands cuffed in front of her and skirt torn all the way up to mid thigh.

Ward and Coulson found themselves doing nothing as the female specialist managed to subdue her opponents in under a minute, seemingly not even breaking a sweat.

The room went silent, save for the quiet prayer in the corner and May’s slightly faster than normal breathing.

“You okay?” Phil asked, sliding his gun back into its holster.

May snorted, twisting her arms in her restraints and freeing herself with a sickening crack of a dislocated wrist. “Amateurs,” she commented, dropping the metal cuffs on the floor with a clatter.

Coulson winced. “You’ve got to stop doing that,” he told her. “I hate it.”

May shrugged.

“Why didn’t you do that sooner?” asked Ward. “You didn’t have to fight them handcuffed.”

Another shrug, and Phil had the feeling Melinda didn’t have an answer to that. He suspected she had just wanted to show off.

It was at this point that the two other hostages realised their situation had changed - they rushed towards May, telling her something in a hurried Korean.

She gave the duo a blank look before turning to Phil, her black eyes begging him to do something.

Coulson was at a loss.

Melinda stepped away from her adoring fans, fixing up her crumpled shirt and scowling when the refugees followed her. “Phil,” the Asian specialist snarled at him, pointing at the two tearful Koreans who kept babbling something in their mother tongue. “Make them stop, I have no clue what they’re saying.”

He gave her an apologetic shrug. “Probably thanking you for saving their lives,” he wagered a guess.

The Chinese woman looked unimpressed. “Make them stop,” she repeated.

Coulson did as he was asked, intercepting the two frightened hostages and unlocking their cuffs with a universal key he always kept in his pocket for situations like these. Freeing the Koreans turned their adoration to him instead of the irritated May.

Wrapping up the ‘Black and Blue Seven’ for the CIA to pick up later on that day, the SHIELD agents debated what to do with the rescued captives.

“Just leave them here,” May shrugged. “The CIA will pick them up when they come for the báichī over there.”

Coulson scowled. “May, I know you hate undercover work, but it wasn’t their fault they got caught up in this. You of all people should understand their situation,” he told her.

She gave him a surprised look. “What?”

Phil stuttered to a halt. “Um, well, I mean… you also immigrated to America?” he explained weakly, realising that what he’d said was pretty stupid.

May clearly thought so too. “I wasn’t running from the regime of my country,” she disputed. “Bad as it is,” she added.

“Forget I said anything,” Coulson quickly backtracked. “Let’s just figure out what to do with our friends here. He turned to them. “You speak any English at all?” he asked.

Two confused stares and a quiet ‘Mwo?’ was his answer.

“Right, of course not.” He sighed, clicking on his comm. “Skye, is there any hotel we might leave them in for the CIA to pick them up at later?”

A sound of computer keys clicking and then, “A motel, two hundred feet west.”

“Everything’s sorted then,” Phil concluded with relief.

 

An hour later when everyone was back aboard the Bus, he had to revise his statement - everything was definitely  _ not  _ sorted. He had just left his office when Ward stormed out of May’s cockpit, a murderous expression on his face.

“Ward, wha-”

“What did you say to her, sir?” the specialist snarled at him.

Coulson gritted his teeth. “I’d thank you to alter your tone, agent,” he snapped back.

Grant took a calming breath. “May just broke up with me,” he hissed. “I hope you’re happy.” And without waiting for his reaction, the male specialist stropped off.

Feeling embarrassedly relieved and happy at the unexpected news, Phil tried to keep a straight face. It took him a couple minutes to get his feelings under control, so he could go and talk to his best friend.

“May?” he called, knocking at the cockpit door.

She didn’t answer but then again she rarely ever did, so he just entered. “I, uh, heard you ended it with Ward.”

She shrugged, eyes not leaving the horizon in front of her. “It was getting messy.”

He slid into the copilot’s seat, sighing. “Yeah, I know. Skye was pretty upset about it.”

Melinda glanced at him briefly. “You weren’t exactly happy either,” she noted.

“No,” he admitted. “I trust your judgment though.”

The Chinese woman didn’t say anything, her mouth curling into a slightly amused smirk.

“So,” he spoke up after a beat. “What actually made you do it in the end?”

May stayed silent.

“Come on,” he begged, a whine in his voice. “I would tell you if it was me.”

She raised an eyebrow. “Sleeping with Ward?”

He shuddered theatrically. “No, thanks. But, come on, I thought we shared stuff.”

The pilot hesitated briefly before giving in. “I overheard Skye talking to Simmons,” she admitted. “She called me her  _ weirdly distant mother figure _ .”

Phil chuckled. “And?”

“And she called me a maneater.”

“Ouch,” Coulson winced. “Though, going by your track record, I can see why she’d think that,” he chipped in. “You do treat men like paper towels.”

She shot him a murderous look, and he quickly raised his hands in surrender. “Hey! Your words, not mine!” he reminded her.

May huffed. "Anyway, I decided that breaking it off with Ward was going to be better for everyone."

"I don't know," Phil commented, "Ward seemed pretty pissed when I saw him."

"He'll get over it," she said simply.

Another beat of silence and Phil just couldn't help himself anymore. "So," he began cheekily. "You fished out that tracker yet or do you need some help?"

The Chinese specialist glared in answer.

“Right, I have a feeling I’ve overstayed my welcome,” he concluded, clapping his hands together once and rising from his seat. He didn’t think she was actually angry with him because they used to joke about her relationships with men all the time, but it was always wise to err on the side of caution where Melinda May was concerned.

He was nearly out the door when she spoke up, “Phil.”

“Yes?”

“You owe me that drink.”

Coulson smiled. 


End file.
